Green Park Inn

One of the nation's oldest resort hotels, the Green Park Inn has welcomed guests since 1891. Featured by The Washington Post as one of 13 haunted American hotels, this Victorian grande dame sits in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Green Park Inn opened its doors in the summer of 1891, the vision of three Lenoir, North Carolina businessmen led by Civil War veteran Major George Washington Findlay Harper. Built from rare American chestnut and heart pine on the family's extensive acreage in Blowing Rock, the 73,000-square-foot hotel featured sixty guest rooms with fireplaces, running water, and electric bell alarms, along with a restaurant, ballroom, billiard room, bowling alley, shooting gallery, and a telegraph and post office. Over the decades, the inn welcomed a remarkable roster of guests, including Annie Oakley, John D. Rockefeller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Margaret Mitchell, who is said to have penned portions of Gone With the Wind while staying at the hotel. The Green Park Inn was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and remains North Carolina's second-oldest operating resort hotel.

The inn's most enduring ghost story centers on Laura Green, the daughter of one of the hotel's founding family members. According to legend, Laura was engaged to be married at a small church in Blowing Rock, but her fiance never appeared. Left standing at the altar before family and guests, she was overcome with heartbreak and humiliation. She returned to the inn and, in Room 318 on the third floor, hanged herself. Whether every detail of the story is historically verifiable remains debated, but the paranormal activity reported in that room and on that floor has persisted for generations.

Guests staying in Room 318 describe an overwhelming sense of sadness that settles over the room without explanation. Doors open and close on their own. The apparition of a woman in a wedding gown has been seen walking the third-floor hallways, sometimes pausing at doorways before vanishing. Shadow figures have been reported disappearing into the walls, and electronics power down unexpectedly throughout the floor. Beyond Laura's ghost, visitors report hearing the sounds of children playing in the hallways, though no tragedies involving children have been documented in the hotel's history. Disembodied voices and footsteps in empty corridors add to the atmosphere of a building that seems to hold onto its guests long after they have departed.

The inn has hosted numerous paranormal investigators over the years, and they have consistently concluded that the property is genuinely haunted -- not only by Laura but by the spirits of former guests who appear reluctant to leave. The hotel maintains a guest ghost log where visitors can document their own encounters or read through decades of reported experiences. Staff have adopted a knowing approach to the phenomena, operating by the motto, "We respect the privacy of all our guests, whether or not they have ever checked out." The Washington Post named the Green Park Inn one of thirteen haunted hotels across the United States, bringing national attention to the legend of the jilted bride who still wanders the third floor in her wedding dress, searching for the peace that eluded her in life.